Job Opening: Database Journalist, Politics

‘Tho the weather outside is frightful, we’re looking for some delightful people to join our team at FiveThirtyEight, and we’ll be posting several job opportunities over the coming days.

Most of these positions require a more technical background than those that we’ve advertised so far, meaning some combination of database, programming, and design skills in addition to a keen interest in data journalism.

This particular listing is for a Database Journalist who concentrates on U.S. Politics — analyzing, developing, maintaining, and reporting upon databases in areas like campaign finance, congressional voting, and federal and state elections.

The ideal candidate will have experience in working with publicly-available databases such as those from the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Census Bureau. They should be able to demonstrate capabilities in several of the following environments:

* Relational database systems such as MySQL or Postgres;
* Statistical programming languages like R or STATA;
* General purpose programming languages like Python and Ruby.

Although the technical requirements for this position are fairly precise — candidates with different skills and interests should consider waiting until we post jobs that are better suited for them — it is also a position on the front line of FiveThirtyEight’s newsroom. The candidate will work with the rest of FiveThirtyEight’s journalists, especially its interactive team, to develop interactive features, stories, and models based on political data. The candidate will frequently have his or her byline on the site, and will have regular opportunities to write short-form and long-form stories for FiveThirtyEight. They’ll also have opportunities to collaborate with our colleagues at ABC News and ESPN.

We are happy to consider candidates with a wide range of professional backgrounds, including journalism, academia, the nonprofit sector, the private sector, and government. The compensation level will vary depending on the candidate’s skills and experience level. We will be especially enthusiastic about candidates with multifaceted skill sets – for instance, those who can demonstrate skills in writing, reporting, statistical analysis or data visualization, in addition to their strong database and programming abilities.

Our strong preference is that the candidate work out of our New York newsroom, although Washington, D.C. would be considered as an alternative.

If you are interested in this position, please send a resume to 538JOBS AT GMAIL DOT COM. Please include the phrase DATABASE JOURNALIST, POLITICS in the subject line. We’re very excited to hear from some of you. Stay tuned for more job openings over the course of the next week.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight. @natesilver538